A heavy, wet snow continues falling over metro Kansas City with steady winds strong enough to threaten power outages.

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Professional observers view the snowstorm

Outages have been reported in parts of Northern Missouri, around the Chillicothe area. Some spotty power dropouts are reported around Kansas City. The winter storm is holding up to predictions of 24 hours earlier.

Many motorists have stayed off roads to keep traffic far lighter than normal. Southern reaches may still get a foot of snow, according to forecasters and by daybreak, Corporal Kevin Tieman was tracking snow from the Cass County Sheriff's Office--"right now we're probably looking at about between 5 and 6 inches of snow. This is a really heavy, wet snow. Real different than the storm that we had last week."

If the snow gets too deep for conventional rescue vehicles, the Sheriff's office has borrowed two Humvees from the Army to allow travel. Not needed so far.

Snow becomes so heavy at times it shortens visibility making moving around more difficult. Not a blizzard in the classic sense, according to meteorologist Mike July at the National Weather Service in Pleasant Hill, "We're on the border, on the threshold of it."

July adds, "Because visibilities would need to be down around a quarter of a mile and need to see winds sustained around 45 miles an hour. So not quite there yet. But I can tell you, if you're out driving and about in this, it's almost as bad as a blizzard."